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not real, made up, purely intended for entertainment

Proposed Porpoise Purpose

by Ninjetti

Nicky ran.

He ran like he'd never run before, like his life totally depended on it, only it wasn't his life, or maybe it was, but it was everybody else's, too.

All Lou Perlman's fault... he thought to himself as he ran.

Him and whatever crazy mad scientist guy came up with the mutie thing in the first place... Nick thought as he sprinted for the cliff, wishing he could find cover.

Damn Lou for taking us to those mad scientist doctors in the first place. Immunizations for Europe, my barely-teenaged-at-the-time ASS. Dirty fucker just went wherever was cheapest, didn't care if they were injecting us with animal genes or whatever they did... he told himself as he tried to avoid crashing through the trees, tried to keep quiet. There were cat people and psychics and God only knew what other kinds of freaks after him; he couldn't hide out here in the open, the wilderness, where his mostly-human self stood out like a sore thumb. Those freaks lived in the mountain caves, out here in Nowhere; they would totally know how to find him, know where the trails were, be able to see in the dark even though the stupid moon was behind stupid clouds tonight...

Nick held on to his anger, used it to keep himself going, to push harder, run faster, keep running, and keep the panic at bay.


He'd never felt so stupid in his life.


It had all started with a pretty lady, ironically enough. Or not at all, depending on who you asked.


Well, it had started with Lou's cheap-ass doctors, but they hadn't known that back then. They'd just been a little different ever since, Kevin having freaky dreams that came true sometimes, Brian always literally knowing how everyone felt, Howie seeming to just disappear sometimes, and AJ...well, AJ's love of pyrotechnics didn't so much need a lighter as people might think, these days.

But that had been fine, maybe even fun, they'd practically grown up that way, or at least Nicky and AJ had, and the other Boys seemed to be fine with their...quirks. And it had all been fine until that one night in that club in New York, when crazy people with guns were after them, and some of them were kinda quirky, too. The Backstreet Boys had been captured, Kevin swore he called JC Chasez for help, and Brian said he sort of vaguely remembered being held prisoner in a futuristic coffin, but they figured that was just trauma, a nightmare. They had all woken up in the StormKing Mountain Visitor's Parking Lot, in a car rented in Kevin's name that Kevin didn't remember renting, wearing different clothes than they had at the club the night before. And all of their heads had been shaved bald.

That had been really, really weird, but they had gone back to their hotel, all their crew assuming they'd been out on some kind of daytrip on their day off the day before, and there was minor freaking out over their bald heads, but there were wigs. And hair would eventually grow back.


They had gotten over it.


And that had been a few years ago, and Lance Bass always gave them this weird look whenever he ran into any of them, but that had always been true. It's just now the weird look sorta looked like guilt, and Brian said Lance felt guilty about something, and Brian was always right about how people felt.

But whatever, Lance was free to be weird if he wanted, to come out if he wanted, whatever. So things had been fine, until the pretty lady showed up at the club.

Nick hadn't known at the time that things weren't fine when she showed up, though. She had been nice, and pretty, and told him he looked really handsome, and she didn't mean to be forward, but he looked familiar, was he an actor? And Nick had smiled and said no, and she had said good, because she was sure she knew the names to go with the faces of all the actors she liked, so she couldn't figure out why he looked familiar.

So Nick had said, well, he was a singer, not an actor. Had been since the mid-90s.

And she had squealed, and said omigod a lot, and been really embarrassed and kind of adorable. So they had gotten a table and drinks, and they talked about her love of Backstreet. She had confessed that she had been happy for them when she had heard they were back (alright!), but she hadn't actually checked out their new stuff, because she had been really busy. And Nick had politely asked what she had been busy with, but he was interested, too, besides. So she told him, she was working with a group of specially gifted people, trying to change the world for the next generation, give them the future they deserved. And she had been so convicted, so into what she was doing that Nick hadn't even thought about saying no when she asked if he'd be interested in seeing what they were doing, maybe contributing a little? Maybe a photo-op, or a little hands-on if he liked what he saw, that'd be a big promo opportunity, if they could say Nick Carter was with them, show a picture of him on site.


It only occurred to him later that her eyes had been glowing when he had told her "yes."


So they had left (even though he hadn't told the other guys) and gotten in her car (she had a really nice car, even though she said her groups efforts were actually not-for-profit because they didn't pay anything; they were working for the future) and the drive had only taken a minute (even though the club was downtown and they got out of the car in the middle of nowhere and he didn't actually remember hardly any of the drive, just leaving and arriving.)

She had led him into the forest and up a rise and into a cave, but that was okay, they had to be secluded, right? Doing important work for the future, right? Of course it was, Nick had answered while her eyes were glowing again.

And she led him to his cell, past the rough cave walls that had LINKS SHALL RULE! HUMANS ARE CHATTEL! all over them, and it was all fine.



Until her forehead stopped glowing, and Nick realized he was in some crazy high-tech cell with a glass front, like one of the monsters in the secret military base in that season of Buffy.



"What the Hell? What the Hell? WHAT THE HELL?" Nick had shouted when he realized that, because nothing good had ever happened in high-tech secret cells, duh. He wasn't sure if they wanted to put microchips in his head or sell him to aliens or dissect him to figure out his quirk, but he knew it couldn't possibly be good.

"Oh, hush," she had said, scowling at him. "I told you, I'm part of an elite organization working to change the future of the world. You have potential to offer we'd like to take advantage of."

"NO!" Nick shouted back at her, hyperventilating. "Totally No, Absolutely Not! Whatever you want, you can't have it; let me GO!" he had yelled, wincing at the way the shrillness of his voice reflected off the heavy glass of his cell.

"Please," she'd said, waving a dismissive hand at him. "You're a fantastic specimen. Only ten of you ever had the Genomex treatment after childhood, and you were right on the cusp. You're the only feral of your type; you're unique," she had said, like he was the greatest thing since electricity. "You see, we've been trying to fulfill Gabriel's plans, get a unique mix of all four types, but it just won't work. Mating two types always gave us an interesting mix, but when we'd try to mix those two to get the total of four, it'd just melt."

She had grinned at him, like he had any idea what the hell she was talking about.

"But, Dominique finally figured out that mixing two of the same type but of wildly different mutations would result in a more flexible offspring, so we could mix two and two from there to get the total four we need."

"Offspring?" Nick had asked with a worried frown, the only part of her supposed explanation that had made any sense whatsoever.

"Oh, yes!" she had answered. "See, our problem is that all of our unusual ferals were girls. So we needed a good male sample," she finished, grinning broadly at him.

"So...you want me to... ..with one of your 'special' girls....?" Nick had asked, frowning harder.

"Yup!" she had nodded, grinning now that he got it. "Not me, of course, or we could have just done that at the club. I'm a psionic, full mind control, not a feral, sorry." She grimaced. "I had to do it with that nasty precog John Bishop; you should consider yourself fortunate," she'd said, frowning with distaste.

"Why?" Nick had asked cautiously, very afraid he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Well, our most unusual female feral is Janessa," she had explained, stepping out of the way and holding up a hand to show him Janessa.

Janessa was statuesque, exotic-looking, buxom as all get out, had more hair than all of Sphynkter put together, and completely naked.


Nick's jaw had dropped.


"So...what's the catch?" he had asked, suddenly worried again. "Why do I have to be in a sci-fi cage for this?"

"Well, we really can't have you saying 'no' in the middle or anything," she had replied, her smirk suggesting she thought he would. Nick knew he had been right to be worried. "She'll conceive the perfect feral child with you, genetically flexible enough to mix with another type, and Morgan will use his chronological elemental powers to get the pregnancy over with immediately, then age the baby up to maturity. We do the same thing with the other three, and they all mate, and we do it again with those two special Links, and they mate, and the resulting perfect mix of all four mutant types will be Gabriel's heir, a god among human, even among mutants, and take over the world."

"Okay, that's swell, so if you can just do a couple of quickies in one night, why am I in a cage for Janessa?" Nick asked, worried about the answer but more interested in buying time to find a way out of this absolutely crazy mess.

"Oh, because she's an arachnid feral. Trapdoor spider," she had explained nonchalantly as Janessa grinned, showing off her remarkably long and sharp-looking teeth. "So she kills her mate afterward, you know," she had finished, and Janessa had transformed.


Nick had suddenly remembered Brian watching Animal Planet with Baylee, repeating every other sentence in a toddler-entertaining sing-song voice, even though Baylee didn't know half the words his dad was saying.

"Hair and horns and claws and even insect shells are all made of keratin, aaall the same thing!"

Janessa's hair had sort of slurped back into her head, oozing out her pores all over her body and coating her in shiny black armor. But she didn't just get sealcoated, her eyes had gone freaky, all buggy, and she'd grown a couple more on her forehead. And big bug fangs, spider fangs, mandibles, whatever. And those claw things, too. And she had still been naked and quite obviously female and had approached Nick's sci-fi cell in a way that could only be described as hungrily.

Nick hadn't screamed like a girl; he had channeled his inner dolphin and screeched like Daryl Hannah in Splash, shattering the heavy glass of his cell and exploding every piece of glass in the cavern, including all the lightbulbs.


Needless to say, chaos had ensued, and Nick had Run Like Hell. The Discovery Channel or Animal Planet or one of those had also informed Nick that trapdoor spiders were very sensitive to vibrations; Janessa was overwhelmed by his screech and still shaking her head as he ran away. The psychic chick from the club couldn't see him in the suddenly darkened cave, and Nick kept keening, pretty easily in his terrified state, using the noise as sonar and finding his way outside.



Nick had ran, away from the cave and into the woods before any of the superfreaks could spot him. The woods had given out a moment later, but Nick's sonar told him there was a cliff ahead, a sudden lack of any obstacles whatsoever.

The clouds suddenly gave out too, and under the moon's light, Nick could see the edge he was charging toward.


More importantly though, he could smell the ocean.


Just as cries broke out in the woods behind him and some kind of lightning bolt or something blasted into the sky, giving Nick's pursuers light to see him by, Nick reached the edge.

He threw himself over it, dropping into the ocean below.



Nick Carter swam away from the crazy Links who wanted to feed him to a giant spider-lady and use his spunk to rule the world, because he was genetically part dolphin, the only one of his kind.



~END~

 

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